Vatican downplays mafia threats against pope

religion news service

Updated 1:07 pm, Monday, November 25, 2013

Pope Francis greets the crowd as he arrives for his general audience at St Peter's square on November 20, 2013 at the Vatican. AFP PHOTO / ANDREAS SOLAROANDREAS SOLARO/AFP/Getty Images
Photo: ANDREAS SOLARO, Staff

In this Saturday, March 23, 2013 photo provided by the Vatican paper L'Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis, left, meets Pope emeritus Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo Saturday, March 23, 2013. Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has emerged from his self-imposed silence inside the Vatican to publish a lengthy letter to one of Italy's most well-known atheists. In it, he defends his record on handling sexually abusive priests and discusses everything from evolution to theology to the figure of Jesus Christ. Excerpts of the letter were published Tuesday, Sept. 24, 2013 by La Repubblica, the same newspaper which just two weeks ago published a similar letter from Pope Francis to its own atheist publisher. The letters indicate the two men in white, who live across the Vatican gardens from one another, are pursuing a collaborative campaign of sorts to engage non-believers. (AP Photo/Osservatore Romano, Files)
Photo: Uncredited, HOPD

In this Saturday, March 23, 2013 photo provided by the Vatican...

Pope Francis arrives for his general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican last week.
Photo: TIZIANA FABI, Stringer

Pope Francis arrives for his general audience in St. Peter's Square...

Pope Francis envisions the church as being a big tent, capable of including more than just a select group of people. He also said God endorses the existence of gay people with love and not rejection and condemnation.
Photo: HOPD

Pope Francis envisions the church as being a big tent, capable of...

In this Saturday, Sept. 7, 2013 picture made available by the Vatican newspaper l'Osservatore Romano, Pope Francis looks at a Renault 4L donated to him by Rev. Renzo Zocca, not pictured, as he speaks with Zocca's assistant Luigi Macchioni, left, at the Vatican. Rev. Zocca, 69, told the Associated Press on Wednesday, Sept. 11, 2013 that he has dedicated his life to helping the needy on the outskirts of Verona, so when he saw that Pope Francis' priority was to reach out to the world's poor and inspire the Catholic leaders to go to slums and peripheries to preach, he decided to donate what he calls his 29-year-old "car of the French farmers" as a symbol of this approach. The pontiff invited Rev. Zocca for a private audience and on that occasion the priest had the car brought to the Vatican. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano)

ROME - The Vatican downplayed on Friday reported mob threats against Pope Francis, just two days after a high-profile anti-mafia prosecutor said Francis could be a target from the 'Ndrangheta mafia organization in southern Italy.

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's chief spokesman, told reporters recently that the Vatican was "extremely calm" regarding a possible mob threat against the pope.

"There is absolutely no reason for concern, no need to feed alarmism," Lombardi said.

The statement comes a day after Francis traveled the three miles between Vatican City and the Quirinale Palace in Rome with his normal staff and without a police escort or any additional security to visit Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

Anti-mob prosecutor Nicola Gratteri, who has himself been a target of threats from organized-crime groups, made a series of remarks that Francis' reform-minded agenda is making the 'Ndrangheta "very nervous" and that the pontiff could become a target for the organization.

"For many years, the mafia has laundered money and made investments with the complicity of the church," Gratteri said. "But now the pope is dismantling the poles of economic power in the Vatican, and that is dangerous."

Gratteri said the pope's efforts to confront corruption and to modernize the scandal-scarred Vatican Bank have attracted the mob's ire. The Vatican Bank, which is going through reforms as part of a wider set of changes at the Institute for Religious Works, recently published its first annual report and has closed accounts and made its books more transparent. In addition, the institute published its first report on money laundering - a major mob activity - in May.

Francis has not been shy about blasting corruption wherever he can find it, including organized-crime groups. About the time of the institute's report on money laundering, the pope strongly criticized all of Italy's mob organizations, including the 'Ndrangheta. Earlier in the week, he railed against the evils of corruption, an address that prompted Gratteri's remarks.